Sunday, January 28, 2007

Folks, I Think You Know I've Been Faking This

Something happened to me a couple of weeks ago and it had a profound impact on my life. I just can't go into it right now, but it's not about the movie biz. It's sort of bigger than that. By the way, I am currently waiting to hear from Hollywood on the last big rush order to get them a script, and that has added a little suspense, but not a lot. I am hopeful, but we're getting into that "no news is bad news" window. My producer wants this to happen for me so badly, that he's at the point where he literally can't call with bad news. Isn't that nice in a way? I used to get the calls from the freeway on the way home from the meeting, but that doesn't happen now.

See, this is just what I'm talking about. That whole topic was a diversion from more immediate realities. A blog is a perfect chance to be honest if you want to be. There are no filters so you're free to share what goes on in your life, and nobody's going to interfere. Yet there are times when I just don't follow through. I used to complain about being held back in the full disclosure area by the Portland Tribune, and here I am holding back on my own.

I could blow some smoke about still searching for the true direction of my blog, but that's not it. It's simple: I've been ducking the most meaningful truth and that makes things less readable and more phony. I hate that aspect of it and as soon as I get my courage up, I'll divulge what's really been going on.

Okay, here's one example: This is what happened to my wife the other week. I suppose it was imminently bloggable but somehow I just couldn't discuss it.

Her birthday was a while back and she went out to lunch with one of her friends named Arlene. We've taken care of Arlene's cat but I don't know her that well. Anyway, they were sitting there in a restaurant on Belmont, and suddenly there was a huge noise. My wife thought it was someone firing a gun, but then again, she's from the Chicago area. What had happened was a car had been pulling out on Belmont, got sideswiped and careened back into the restaurant breaking a pane of glass and making a hell of a bang. The woman got out from the car and collapsed so there was some upsetting medical stuff, and then there was that close call feeling. If my wife and Arlene had sat at a different table they could have really been hurt.

As it was, small pieces of glass landed on their table - that's how close it was. Incidentally, when my wife was in her late teens or early twenties she was in a horrific train accident in Chicago where cars fell off the elevated tracks to the street below and she saw dead and wounded people. She said this incident made her flashback to that.

She came home where I was unfortunately taking a nap, and being the stoic trooper type she just read the paper till I woke up. I did tell her to go ahead and wake me in the future for these events, but it was all part of her shock. She was definitely in some kind of shock. I know Arlene reported being hypersensitive to traffic and noise just walking down the street, and my wife opted out of driving by the scene again later that day. Incidentally, the other car took off, but dropped its license plate on Belmont. None of this made the papers.

From my point of view, my wife was obviously there and all right before I even heard what happened but later, the what-if's crept in and then there was the always unpleasant realization that things can go so wrong so quickly for the people we love. Just watching my wife go through being shook up was painful enough. I walked over and looked at the area, but I decided not to blog about it at the time. I was going to but I sort of froze.

There are a couple of other things that are going on - one that happened to me but not a bad thing, just heavy. I've been reluctant to blog about these also so I've felt distant from this process.

I'm just glad my wife is all right. I don't even want to think about it. The detail that really illustrates how close it was, is the glass landing on their table. That's close.

What broke the spell as far as opening up again on this blog, was watching my cable access show tonight and hearing my "Let's Leave Iraq" song again. That cable access show was straight on, dead-ahead honest for 30 minutes. Not a phony millisecond in the whole thing, which is rare for TV. This inspired me to return to the blog and maybe be a little more forthcoming. Writing is so much easier if you're being real. Besides, who needs more phoniness in the world? If you can't say it - if you can't bring the truth - then what the hell is the point?